


Burning Cold

by thepalebluedot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Gen, it's been a year and im still not over it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 11:57:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3809533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepalebluedot/pseuds/thepalebluedot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are a child of darkness, a child of winter. A soldier, they tell you, but soldiers have units, soldiers have armies behind them, soldiers have to train, soldiers believe in their cause, and you are not a soldier. You are alone; your training is needles, ice burning cold in your veins, and your cause is in the red star on your shoulder. You are worth an army, they tell you, and they put a gun in your hands and tell you where to point it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning Cold

**Author's Note:**

> my take on the winter soldier and his mind, basically
> 
> (also unbetaed, sorry for any mistakes)

You do not dream. When they put you under, you do not dream. When they put you under, there is nothing but silence and emptiness and ice, and when they pull you out, you only get flashes, flashes that flicker and fade as they shove rubber between your teeth and pour electricity into your brain. Flashes that are bright and blinding and warm and gone, gone before you have the chance to figure out what exactly they are.

You do not dream. You do not think. Someone else thinks for you; there are thoughts in your head that are not your own, but they are not the thoughts of the men and women in uniforms that give you files and missions, nor are they the thoughts of the men and women in lab coats who slip needles under your skin. Those men and women fear you, you can see it in their eyes, and the thoughts in your head are thoughts of someone who does not fear you; they are thoughts of someone who controls you, someone who knows what they want you to do, and you accept these thoughts as your own because there isn't much else inside your head, just thoughts that aren't your own and a wall made of crumbling stone, a wall that light flashes through in the small window of time after they pull you out and before they strap you down.

There is ice running through your veins and it burns cold, a lingering pain that lasts from the moment they pull you out to the moment they put you back under. There is ice in your jaw, freezing it shut, and there is ice in your limbs, in your bones, numbing them until you feel nothing. You are a robot; a machine made of metal and ice, your hands stained red as you complete mission after mission, make kill after kill with a detached sense of satisfaction and an even more detached sense of horror. You do not know the people you kill, and yet you remember every face, every stain of red and fragment of white, and while you do not dream, you are haunted by dead eyes and blue lips and bloodstains on carpet. 

There is nothing but red in your ledger, and if you had thoughts to call your own, you think you would probably be horrified. Horrified at what has been done to you, horrified of what you've done, horrified at the piles of bodies you've left behind, horrified at the amount of blood on your hands, some innocent and some not.

But your head is full of someone else’s thoughts, someone else’s ideals and visions and morals. There is red in your ledger, red on your hands, red on the shoulder of your left arm. There is ice in your veins, ice in your bones, ice in your mind, and you are numb; you feel nothing, no guilt and no remorse. You are a child of darkness, a child of winter. A soldier, they tell you, but soldiers have units, soldiers have armies behind them, soldiers have to train, soldiers believe in their cause, and you are not a soldier. You are alone; your training is needles, ice burning cold in your veins, and your cause is in the red star on your shoulder. You are worth an army, they tell you, and they put a gun in your hands and tell you where to point it.

Your ledger is dripping red and you can feel the cold in both of your bloodstained hands. Your left arm is lighter and your right arm is colder and the guns they put in your hands are larger and the knives they strap to your body are sharper. The wall is crumbling, the light filtering through even after they pump ice into your blood and electricity into your brain. 

Blood on your bulletproof vest, your finger on the trigger, metal hands around necks, bruising purple and blue. Knives slipped between ribs and dragged across throats. Your two fingers on wrists feeling nothing, no pulse, no blood pumping, no heartbeat, a confirmed kill. Blood in your mouth and blood on your hands, the dull thud of bodies hitting pavement, shattered glass and tires screeching and the heat from a fire. Smoke in your lungs, stinging your eyes, the smell lingering on your skin. Screaming. Begging. Sobbing. Weeping. The soft, harsh sighs of last breaths. Burned in your brain, burning cold. Memories, dripping red and burning cold. Flashes, shining gold and fading blue.

The wall is crumbling, and they shove rubber between your teeth and pour electricity into your brain until you've forgotten where the wall even is, forgotten to feel horrified at the blood on your hands. 

You are a child of winter, and your body burns cold. Your mind is numb and full of someone else’s thoughts, and your ledger is overflowing with red and your hands, calloused flesh and silver, are tainted crimson.

The wall is nothing but hairline fractures, ready to crumble, held in place by an electric current and someone else’s thoughts and the unconscious desire to remain numb.

Blood and bodies and ice and smoke and a giant metal disc flung at your head, flung back at the shadow of the man who has somehow managed to keep up with you.

Bloodstained and burning cold, light flashes through the cracks and the wall in your mind crumbles, and it’s so much, too much, you can’t sort it out; there’s so much color and so much light and so much horror and death and red, it’s too much, and you shut it down because it is easier to be numb, easier to shove the light away, complete the mission, because the mission is organized, simple. The mission is what you know, so you hide the light behind that pile of bricks and stone and (try to) complete your mission.

Arms wrapped around your throat, can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe, and the world is going dark, and your mission is not complete, your mission is what is choking you to death, except the darkness feels numb and the numbness is welcoming, and if it wasn't for some basic survival instinct, you’d have given up by now. 

Except you wake up, somehow, and you have a mission. You have a mission and you cannot fail; you put bullets in his stomach (but not his head, he has no helmet, no protection, and for some odd reason, it doesn't occur to you to finish this easily and put a bullet in his brain) only to have him come back for you, free you, drop his shield and drop his guard and let you finish him, the mission is to finish him, and you do not listen to his words as you beat him bloody. You do not listen, but some part of you must hear, because as he stops talking the light comes back, the color comes back, flooding your brain, bright and blinding and warm.

He falls. You fall, too, in a hundred different ways. You leave him on the river bank, knowing he’s alive, but the light and the warmth melted away your mission and left your mind burning, burning hot and cold all at once. Burning gold and burning blue, vision tainted, hands stained, you have nowhere to go, but the thoughts in your head are your own, you think, (you hope), however terrified and lost they may be. You do not know where to go, but you know you are not going back to the burning cold, you are not going back to the electricity, you are not going back under. You are worth an army, they said. You are your own army now. 

You are a child of ice, but the snow is melting.

You are a child of winter, and you have missed the sun.


End file.
